


Research Assistant

by MegumitheGreat



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: Dorodere Chadley, Gen, Human Experimentation, Inspired by Fanart, One Shot, Training Simulator, torture?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:41:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24337597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MegumitheGreat/pseuds/MegumitheGreat
Summary: Having encountered Chadley in the midst of escaping the Shin-Ra building, Cloud is subjected to research.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 33





	Research Assistant

**Author's Note:**

> Heeeeeelloooo~ Oh boy, another FF7-comp fic, but this one is different! I've written for some [fanart](https://twitter.com/cloudcloudcloud/status/1261291654121771013?s=20) that I saw on Twitter, and I got to thinking! The artist did such an amazing job to depict Chadley in a vastly different light, so I hope that my fic is up to par.
> 
> Let it be known that I have yet to unlock the Malboro fight, but I did watch gameplay for the fight! And I really want to try it solo.

“Cloud sure is taking a long time, isn’t he?” Tifa sighed.

“I don’t get that man,” Barret grumbled. “We don’t got time to be doing all these weird-ass VR simulations! We got a chopper to catch!”

“Let’s just hang on for a little longer,” Aerith asked of her friends.

“Patience is a virtue, after all,” Red XIII agreed.

Perhaps it would be much longer.

Cloud stood in the new and improved training simulator that had been rebuilt, winded from yet another simulation battle. Even though the enemies he was put up against were nothing than holograms, the damage they inflicted was very real. Chadley, the unassuming and enigmatic intern at Shin-Ra with a burning hatred for Hojo, watched him with his clipboard just out of his view. With each battle, he turned the difficulty up, changed the players in the game, and recorded every instance that he took damage and how his biometrics changed as a result.

Then, unrelated to the materia, he had noticed something. It was a strange and tiny detail that no one except those within Shin-Ra’s prestigious science department could every hope to see. Chadley had been aware of it every now and again in passing, but he had never seen it happen in the context of a battle. Cloud suffered from peculiar migraines before hesitating to fight back. It typically happened during fights that gave birth to summon materia as if the very existence of the gods within those red orbs reminded him of something better left forgotten in the abyss of his mind. That hesitation which impeded Cloud left him vulnerable to the onslaught of attacks, and in no time at all, he was rendered incapacitated in the fight.

“Another failure?” Chadley mumbled each time. Then he would key in a code on the clipboard like it was a pin-pad. After a five-second delay, the testing chamber lit up with the flying sparks of electricity meant to stimulate his unconscious body. “You can do it, Cloud. Re-evaluate your strategy and try again.”

It didn’t matter how many times he did that. Every time he changed one aspect of his strategy against these holographic beasts, they would evolve as well. Beaten and bloodied, bruised and bludgeoned; Cloud questioned Chadley and his goals. Had he always been this sadistic? Or was he genuinely researching materia to take down Shin-Ra from the inside?

“Don’t give up, Cloud,” Chadley’s sweet voice sounded again, muffled by the thick glass of the testing chamber.

“How long are we doing this?” Cloud asked him trying to catch his breath.

“Until I get the data that I need. After all, this is all paramount to taking down Shin-Ra, right?”

“It’s getting tiresome.”

“You can persevere. I know you can.”

Ifrit, Shiva, Fat Chocobo, Leviathan, Bahamut—Cloud took them all down not without difficulty. He had suffered burns and what might have led to frostbite and fractured bones. Leviathan had nearly drowned him, and Bahamut had threatened to completely obliterate him. But the worst was yet to come.

“Cloud, the data you’ve provided today will greatly assist my research!” Chadley said with a smile. “Now…this is the final test. You will be fighting against the Malboro.”

“Wait, Chad—”

Cloud reached out to him, barred by the glass, before being thrown into the final VR simulation against the legendary Malboro. It towered over Cloud with a gaping mouth that was a cross between a Venus flytrap and a goblin shark. Medusa-like tentacles undulated all over its body, a myriad of eyes blinking at different times as it eyed its next feast.

Cloud hadn’t been able to rest before this fight, and with his entire body already in so much pain and exhaustion, he had to wonder if he could survive. He told himself that it was just a simulation and that Chadley wouldn’t let him die, but…could he trust him to pull the plug on the simulation?

No way out, Cloud readied himself for battle. Normally, Malboros were only ever to be fought with a team or avoided all-together. This case, in the propensity of simulations, Cloud was on his own and very much already disadvantaged. He quickly set out to use his healing materia; however, the monster was far smarter than most enemies. It whipped him hard with its tentacle, disrupting his concentration and rending his spell incomplete. It left him staggering, even, grabbing hold of his sword and yanking it out of his hands to the other side of the battlefield.

“Shit…” Cloud hissed.

He dodged the next few attacks, rolling towards his sword and just stopping before it only for the Malboro to grab him by his ankle and drag him back. It was then that he thought to kick off his boots that would at least let him slide out of its ever-tightening grip. Once he was free, he dashed for his sword. As soon as he touched the blade, he was overcome with an intense nausea and disorientation. Glancing back at the monster as he keeled over retching, he saw the tips of its tentacles glowing purple.

“Poison…?” he wheezed. “Ch-Cha—Chadley, stop the simulation…!”

Cloud clutched his stomach as it began to cramp horrendously in an effort to make him vomit. Again, the Malboro crawled up behind him, plucked him up with a tentacle, and shook him around to see if its prey was still alive. Before it could hang him over its mouth, Cloud found the strength to slice off the tentacle before crashing to the ground. Enraged, the Malboro spewed a noxious gas from its gullet that all but paralyzed him. With him slowed down considerably, the Malboro sharpened one of its tentacles and pinned him to the floor. Cloud let out a blood-curdling scream that went unheard to his teammates waiting outside of the room.

Clutching the sword in his hand, he swung it over him to cut this tentacle. He was free again, but now he was more than just hurt. He forced himself up with his blade acting as a crutch. Slowly he made his way to the edge of the battlefield that lined up with the edge of the testing chamber.

“Chadley…! Chadley, stop the simulation!” he begged him before slumping down in agony again. “The hell is he doing…?” The Malboro encroached upon him, mouth wide open to swallowed him whole and drool dripping from every single tooth. Instinctively, he shielded himself with just his arm. “Dammit, Chadley!”

_Hang on!_

Cloud flinched at the strange voice in his head. Hang on? He’d been hanging on since the beginning of this tortuous fight! Then the simulation locked up, dissipating into a sea of glowing pixels. He was pale from what from poisoning, but now he was fine save for all of the bleeding lacerations on his body and the hole left by the simulated tentacle.

“W-Why…did you take…so long?” Cloud panted, the nausea still afflicting him from the back of his throat like burning tar bubbles. He gagged, only holding himself up by a shaking bloodied hand on the glass.

“I needed to get this research data,” Chadley said too sweetly for his liking. “Shin-Ra continues to develop a simulator that delivers lasting results including physical pain and injury. With technology like this, they can produce SOLDIERs that can endure more and more life-threatening conditions. The Malboro is the hardest enemy to defeat, but if the difficulty of the simulation is increased further, the subject would essentially be matched with one that is encountered in the wild. Knowing this and actively working to break it, we can put a dent in their forces. Of course, there is a cost. Additionally, your biometrics spiked but for an unknown reason. Cloud, I would love to do more research on you.”

Fatigue was taking him.

“Do I have your consent?”

The world around him was lighting up, everything becoming an overwhelmingly bright green and appearing to be filtered through a screen. Spinning round and round in his eyes, in his mind—faster, faster until he heard it. The blood that seeped from his wounds and tinted the soles of his feet a rusty color became more vivid the longer he stared at it, and it pooled around him in a growing circle of despair.

_Beg for my power, and I shall grant it to thee._

_Cloud!_

Chadley looked at Cloud’s biometrics on the clipboard again, the spiking happening twice this time. “Fascinating! It would seem that high stress and low blood pressure contribute to these spikes, but not in a self-preservation way. There’s…something else within you, Cloud. Might I be able to test it?”

Cloud panted from the pain and dizziness. What could that something else be? The two voices in his head—they were both his, weren’t they? No, one of them sounded exactly like Sephiroth. But who was the other voice if not himself?

**Author's Note:**

> I think at first I had the idea to expand a bit more on this fic, but I did want to keep it focused on the artist's work and contain it to Chadley's research. With a tiny liberty taken on the original and remake implications of the migraines, it does give me an idea for yet another fic.


End file.
